Episode 240: What Do We Make Of The Mariners Struggling Rotation?

[00:00:00] Welcome to episode number 240 of the Marine Layer Podcast. The streak is over. The Mariners are swept at home this past weekend by the Blue Jays. Quite a lot to take from the series, including some rotation struggles that Lyle and I just have to talk about because it's been stacking up over these weeks.

[00:00:18] Make sure to stay on top of all of our stuff, you guys. If you want to do that, you can go right over to our website, marinelayerpod.com, where you can find everything from our episodes to our merch to our Patreon, which we really hope you want to go sign up for. All that stuff, you can find our live show schedule, which by the way, next live show, Saturday, May 24th, Queen Anne Beer Hall, 12 p.m. live show, 1 p.m. watch party. That's all over at our website. You can check it out. I'll plug it one more time. Go get your merch.

[00:00:46] It was awesome to see merch around the park this weekend. Everything's over at our website. Again, marinelayerpod.com. Then you can find us all across social media at marinelayerpod. Let's get it rolling.

[00:01:09] And we welcome you to this episode of the Marine Layer Podcast, part of the Just Baseball Podcast Network, recording on Sunday evening, May 11th. An interesting weekend at the ballpark for a number of reasons. First of all, watching the Mariners get swept after the nine previous series they'd just played was a little bit interesting. Not unexpected, but for that Blue Jays team, I'll say was different. There's a lot less Blue Jays fans in there.

[00:01:38] The Mariners' rotation continued to struggle. I mean, outside of the weather, Lyle, it didn't feel like there was much normality. Probably not all that much to get excited about, if that's fair, considering, look, they lost their first series in nearly two handfuls of tries, which is going to happen, and teams don't win every series, which is totally understandable. But the fact it was a sweep makes it a little tougher to swallow. Someone brought up...

[00:02:06] Were you standing next to me after the second game where the guy was pitching me on the importance of winning game two in a series? No. Did you hear any of that conversation? I don't think. Completely unrelated. If someone wants to drop us a comment, someone, I feel terrible for misremembering his name. I think it was Alex. We were at Sluggers after, and we were talking with some friends, my brother who's in town,

[00:02:34] and someone next to us was trying to explain to me why for the importance of winning series, winning game two, which was Saturday, which was that night, was so important, and why it's more important than game one or game three. Do you see anything? Like, is there anything there, you think? Not really. I mean, I guess it's been important for the Mariners in that stretch of series wins because often they lose the first game and win the next two. But I don't know if game two is any more important than either of the others.

[00:03:05] If someone has an idea for me, please just tell us in the comments because I was trying to think it through logically at that point. I was pretty tired, though, so I'm like, I guess at that point. But if someone else thinks it's logical and wants to break the math down, then that would be great. Mariners didn't win game two. They didn't win game three. They didn't win game one. It would have been nice to see something here on Sunday. I was there still at the park on Sunday. Shout out to all the moms out there. Had a great Mother's Day at the ballpark.

[00:03:33] The Mariners didn't have a great Mother's Day at the ballpark. It was, yeah, it was very lopsided. It was one-sided. It was, we'll talk about the starting rotation here in a little bit because I know there's some other dynamics from the series that we need to touch on before. Yeah, watching the Mariners get handled like that. They haven't gotten handled in a game like that since probably the Giants series. Yeah. No, they haven't, which is a testament to them. They don't play themselves out of a lot of games these days.

[00:04:01] They did on Sunday, but it doesn't happen often. Unfortunately, games like that are going to pop up from time to time over the course of the year and for some teams more than others, depending on how strong of a roster you really have. But it kind of goes back to why games one and two were fairly frustrating because the Mariners had some tough luck go against them in those games. And those were games they could have won, but the luck just didn't fall their way in those games.

[00:04:29] And then it didn't really balance out in game three because it was all Blue Jays in the finale. And I thought the Mariners gave themselves a better chance in game one because they really stung the ball. They had better sort of expected stats. If you're ever curious, by the way, if you want to see if your team is, or the Mariners in this case, because I assume almost everyone listening to this podcast is a Mariners fan. If you're unfamiliar with this tool, I would suggest this. And this is a great way to look at this series. You can look at game one and game three of this Blue Jays series.

[00:04:59] For example, have the Mariners gotten unlucky at the plate? Simplest way to think about it. Because you'd be like, man, they've really stung some balls tonight. They've really, I thought, put together some good at-bats. They've put a bunch of guys on base. They've walked a little bit. But we're not scoring any runs. Is like, are they just not executing? Or are they getting unlucky? If you go on Baseball Savant, you click on the game feed, you can look at the expected batting average of both teams.

[00:05:27] It's not the end-all be-all of how to measure how you're playing. But it can give you a general sense. For example, Lyle, here on Sunday, I believe the final number on Sunday, the Blue Jays' expected batting average was over 400. And the Mariners was under 200. I think that lines up based on the amount of infield pop-ups I watched the Mariners have on Sunday. And the amount of times the Blue Jays scorched the baseball.

[00:05:54] As opposed to Friday, where you and I both think the Mariners got pretty unlucky in that game and they had a good offensive approach and they were stinging the ball all over the place and didn't get any results, Mariners finished with a substantially higher expected batting average than the Blue Jays did on Friday but didn't have anything to show for it. Sometimes that just happens because what expected batting average doesn't take into account is where the ball is hit. It just takes into account what your launch angle is and how far you hit, how hard you hit it.

[00:06:21] So I really like that tool and I think it showcases itself pretty well in this series. And if you want to look at it in simpler terms on Sunday, it's as easy as this. The Blue Jays had 15 hits and the Mariners had 4. Yeah. So there wasn't much going the way of the M's on Sunday. There's no real way to slice it up. Again, Friday and Saturday things could have gone different because a couple bounces go the way of the Mariners and they win a game or two of those. Sunday just wasn't their day.

[00:06:51] There's a couple fan elements I want to touch on first before we get to baseball. First of all, shout out to the Gate 14 podcast. We met them finally. It was great to get to meet them on Saturday. It was great seeing Avery and Johnny in Seattle. They were at all three games. So if people were curious and you don't pay as close attention to our social channels where we posted that we met them, we did track them down. We got the mailbag question on Friday.

[00:07:18] Hey, are you guys going to make a point to go try and talk to Avery and Johnny? And more of the framing of that question was, when the Mariners beat the Blue Jays, unfortunately not. Are you guys going to have them on and make fun of them and trash them? Unfortunately, we can't do that because that's not what happened. We did find them and say hi. Also, if you're a Mariners fan, I don't think you want them on the pod at this point.

[00:07:43] Believe me, from all the comments we saw on social media posting about Johnny this weekend, all these fans, it's like, God, get this guy off my channel. I don't want to see him. I don't want him on my feed. It's like, well, I don't blame you because he's probably going to be loud and trash talking for every good reason because his team just swept your team. And if you're curious, Johnny did explain on our Instagram and our TikTok on what you posted

[00:08:10] on Sunday morning about why he hates Mariners fans so much. So if you're curious, it's a rare list these days, Lyle, where the Mariners are only behind the Yankees in something. And who would have thought it would have been for what Johnny described it as? If you haven't seen it, go look at the videos on social media. Yeah. But it was cool getting to see those guys. I'm glad they made the trip. And I say that because it seemed like a lot of other Blue Jays fans did not make the trip.

[00:08:40] I believe the attendance of the series was down on average, I'm going to say 8,000 per game, which is kind of crazy. I've been to those games before where the Blue Jays are in town, and it is usually an absolute madhouse. It is crazy. The energy level is ratcheted up as high as possible. You can hear it on TV. You can see it in the ballpark. You can see the energy with it.

[00:09:09] Just kind of felt like a normal weekend series with warm weather. Mm-hmm. I'm going to be honest. It feels like the attendance of Mariners fans is still down these days right now, too, although that could be a different topic in itself because, yeah, there were less Blue Jays fans this weekend. There's no doubt. It also doesn't feel like it is being swarmed with Mariners fans right now, even despite all the winning until this weekend. But again, this may be a topic for another day.

[00:09:39] And I threw my theories out to you of why there wasn't a swarm of Mariners fans, even though they're in first place. With the Blue Jays series, a lot of Mariners fans, I'll use a family member, my mother, as an example, have been to those Blue Jays games and be like, I don't want to go to that game. It's a road game. Mm-hmm. With a bunch of Blue Jays fans. Who wants to go to that? And you're paying inflated prices. Well, the prices were still up this weekend. And everyone has the thought that it's going to be about a lot of Blue Jays fans.

[00:10:08] And unfortunately, it was not. Yeah. I'm more using a collective sample size from not what just is a Blue Jays series, but what has been a lot of series early in the year. And I'm sorry. My takeaway is fans are still not bought back in yet. Not everybody, but there is a decent size of this fan base that is not bought back in yet. And it's going to take more winning for them to do so. And getting swept won't help that. I'd say that, yeah. So I would say that is part of it.

[00:10:36] And I would say this weekend is part of it. The specifics of this weekend are part of it as well, which even if you're in first place, I guess doesn't help. Yeah. And again, what I mean by not bought back in, we don't have to rehash this whole thing, but we're referring to, again, what was the offseason? Like that's what it's about. Now, if they keep winning, people will come back. It's that simple. I still think there's a decent amount of fans out there that aren't bought back in yet. Was there anything from the series, though,

[00:11:05] that actually like that you watched that and you had an oh shit moment? I don't feel like that was the case for me. If someone's out there freaking out that they got swept, I don't think I didn't really see that. In terms of red flags? I would say. Yeah, like a red flag like, oh, like this was unsustainable. Because we're going to talk about the rotation. That's not new. That problem is not new. That has happened already this season.

[00:11:35] We've already talked about it this season. In terms of like them stacking up against the Blue Jays and looking outmatched, there's nothing else. No, not really. I wouldn't say there was anything like crazy that made them look like a totally inferior team. Again, they lost all three games. They got they did not. They were not the better team this weekend, even though they still have the better record. But yeah, I wouldn't say there was any crazy red flags aside from some of the rotation stuff,

[00:12:04] which we're going to get to. That makes me say, oh yeah, it's time to hit the panic button. It was just after nine straight series wins, you finally had a few games go against you. So not from this series. Now I will say, if you want to pinpoint a red flag, this is a nine game stretch that is now going to be pretty tough. Because you've got the Yankees for three, and you've got the Padres in San Diego for three after that. So they could have used this series against the Blue Jays to win another two or three,

[00:12:33] like another two of three games here this weekend. And it would have set themselves up nicely to play against two really good teams upcoming this week. But now that they got swept, they're going to be battle tested here because they got to find some way to salvage some games this week so they don't totally free fall. And we'll see how they match up. I'm not buying though that the Mariners will just roll over against the Yankees. I don't think the Yankees are that much better than the Mariners.

[00:13:00] The Yankees have an inner circle Hall of Fame hitter, some hot hitters, Max Freed's pitching really well. Like here's where the Yankees are right now. It's Aaron Judge. Ben Rice has been really good. Paul Goldschmidt's been really good. Max Freed has been one of the best pitchers in baseball so far. I'll add Trent Grisham to that. Oh, Trent Grisham, yeah, has been. Talk about someone I was not expecting to be elite who's elite. He has been unbelievable for them.

[00:13:29] The rest of it, I'm just saying. I'm not saying the Mariners will roll over and die. That's not what I'm saying. I am saying they're not playing a series against the Angels. They're not playing a series against the Rockies. They're not playing a series against the White Sox here. It's a real team. They can't afford to lose two straight more series or the AL West is going to really shrink despite their lead already not being that big as it is.

[00:13:55] Because if they drop four of six this week after dropping three in a row to the Blue Jays, that is a tough stretch. Yeah, so that would be. Yeah, so I mean, that's. So I'm assuming you're saying they're losing two of three to each. In this scenario, I'm saying if that happens, that's a really tough stretch. It'd be seven of nine they've lost. Yeah, no. Yeah, that would not be good. That would be quite the light switch to flip throughout this week. I'll say there is a pretty big way for them to not do that. And we'll talk about that here in a second with the rotation, Lyle.

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[00:15:18] Part of this Blue Jays series showcased our main topic of this episode, which is watching the 2025 versions of Luis Castillo and Bryce Miller, which have been less than desirable through six weeks of this Major League Baseball season. Before we get started, Lyle, let me read you out where the Mariners' rotation currently ranks statistically. Right now they have a 4-3-4 ERA. That mark is 23rd in baseball.

[00:15:47] They've only pitched 203 and a third innings. That is 23rd in baseball after leading baseball in innings last year. Their strikeout rate is currently 21.8%. That's 15th in baseball. Their walk rate is 8.6%. That is 20th in baseball. And their 1.31 whip is 21st in baseball. For this rotation, even with a couple of injuries, those numbers are shocking.

[00:16:19] It's almost tough to even believe because it was never supposed to be this way despite the injuries to George Kirby and Logan Gilbert. That's still three of five in your rotation that have been tabbed as the best in baseball. And a guy in Bryce Miller, an unbelievable year last year. A guy like Brian Wu, an unbelievable year last year. And then Luis Castillo, who, again, despite what was a downward trend in 2024, you still expect

[00:16:45] to either progress a little bit back to where he was in years past or hold some ground and at least be a slightly above league average pitcher. Which, if that's your five starter in a rotation for the Mariners, great. The issue is, like you said, Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo just haven't had it. And it happened to Bryce again here on Sunday where first couple innings looked pretty sharp.

[00:17:09] And then, like he mentioned postgame, around that fourth inning or so, he started to feel some stuff again. And not in a good way. Now, it wasn't something that led to him being taken out of the game. It's been things that, from what we understand, are similar to the things he's been battling all year so far, where it's minor things that have caused some hiccups and just hasn't allowed him to be fully 100% himself. And as a result, when of your original five in the rotation, the five in the rotation that

[00:17:38] you expect to be, you know, your main guys for the majority of the year, right now one of them's pitching like a true star. And the rest of them have either been injured or have struggled. The other four, again, in terms of Kirby, Gilbert, Miller. And Castillo. Before we talk about those two guys, I do have one more stat for the rotation in general I want to throw at you. And this is the one I think that shocked me the most.

[00:18:05] I said the flat, like non-adjusted ERAs, 4-3-4. There is an ERA equivalent of WRC+, for those who aren't familiar. We use WRC+, on this podcast quite a lot. That's ERA-, we've referenced it here and there. ERA-, it's essentially backwards of WRC+. There's a plus at the end of WRC+, which means higher is better and lower is worse. ERA-, with the minus sign after ERA, means lower is better and higher is worse.

[00:18:34] So the Mariners right now, for ERA-, as a rotation, that's 117. Which means they're 17% worse than the league average at preventing runs as a rotation. And because it's park and league adjusted, this adjusts for the run scoring environment of T-Mobile Park. Meaning, their ERA is actually lower than it should be based on where they play their games and what the run scoring environment is. Here's the problem with that.

[00:19:04] So that number right there is 26th in baseball. Which is already, 26th in baseball is already pretty bad. Right, Lyle? Like, that is pretty bad. But then you look at the other teams around them, right? So they're tied with the A's at 117 for that mark. The only three teams below them are having outlier bad rotation seasons. That's the Marlins, the Orioles, and the Rockies.

[00:19:29] Who, by the way, the quote-unquote best ERA mark of those three, ERA minus mark of those three teams, is 144. Think of the gap. 117 to 144. Those are the only teams that are worse than you right now. So if you're looking at the teams who aren't, like, just completely lost, like, it's bad. For the names in that rotation, it's not great.

[00:19:56] How the hell do the Orioles not spend more time investing in their rotation? Anyway, that's a topic for a different day. But just hearing those numbers is flabbergasting. Because they're kind of the antithesis of the Mariners. They had all this offense. Everybody knows they need pitching. And, well, they let Corbin Burns walk and brought in Charlie Morton and brought in Sagano. And, yeah, it wasn't great. Anyway, for the Mariners' case, they're not supposed to be anywhere near the Orioles.

[00:20:23] They're supposed to be up at the top of the league near where the Dodgers usually are and where the Phillies usually are and where the Braves often are. Again, like, the rotations that get talked about in upper echelon status in baseball are usually the Mariners, the Phillies, and the Dodgers. And right now, at least by this metric, the Mariners aren't even close to that. And, again, it comes back to a combination of a couple things. Injuries, for sure.

[00:20:49] Because having two guys like Logan Gilbert and George Kirby not available for a real chunk of time now, obviously is tough. Because those are guys that are two of the best pitchers in the league when they're healthy. And then the unexpected struggles and pretty tough struggles so far for both Miller and Castillo has been kind of the cause of all of this.

[00:21:14] The difference between this year and last year by ERA minus in terms of runs prevented is 25%. That's a massive drop-off. We anticipated there was going to be some regression with this rotation. If we talked about it preseason, that was my number one reason why I thought this team would miss the playoffs. Because I felt like there would be enough rotation regression that the offense and the lack of resources invested in it would not be able to bail out the regression in the rotation.

[00:21:45] The regression, I think, has taken on a different thing than I had an idea of. I thought, when I sat here and thought preseason, I thought regression would be, someone's getting Tommy John. Point blank period. Not going to have them for another year and a half. And that could still happen. But right now, it's essentially been assuming Logan Gilbert gets back and healthy, which, by the way, it sounds like he will. It sounds like there's no damage. It sounds like legitimately the best case scenario ever, listening to Hollander talking about it.

[00:22:12] As Logan slowly works his way back. The update, by the way, for those curious, he's supposed to get back on a mound to do some sort of light throwing this series with the Yankees, which is amazing to hear about. But the regression for the Mariners rotation has been Bryce Miller's combination of things. It has been Luis Castillo somehow slipping and being worse than his numbers last season, which were already down.

[00:22:39] It was George Kirby dealing with just some shoulder soreness in spring training that he said that he didn't think was that big of a deal. Yeah, so that's most of the regression right there. And that has made up the 25% gap. But it's still hit home, and it's attacking from essentially every direction. And there's not much they can do about it other than continuing to ride it out and hoping these guys find it.

[00:23:05] Because the one thing the Mariners are not going to do is go trade for starting pitching and acquire starting pitching. That's what this team is built on, is this rotation being top-of-the-league level good. If the Mariners have problems offensively, we've seen them trade for guys. Yes, they've done it over the last couple of seasons. We saw it with Turner. We saw it with a Rosarena. People don't love that Paul Seawald trade at the 23 deadline, and I understand it. But they did try to get some offense back as a result.

[00:23:34] Again, I think they really liked Dom Canzone at the time. So they tried something, and there's been years where they've done that. You know, go back to even the Winker and Geno trade in 2022. 21 offense, they didn't feel like was all that sustainable. They tried to upgrade the offense. So you've seen them do that. You've seen them acquire bullpen arms. You've seen them kind of find guys out of the second rider bucket in the bullpen that they've turned into stars. And there's been some of that.

[00:24:01] But they also still are not afraid to go out and acquire guys when they feel like they need bullpen arms. The one thing they don't really do is go trade for starting pitching because that's not what their MO is. Because their team is built on this rotation being elite. So what are they going to do in 2025? No, they're not trading anybody. They're not pulling the plug on any of these starters. It's going to be on them to get healthy, figure it out, and they're kind of going to have to ride the wave.

[00:24:28] This stat, I think, will breach us into focusing on Bryce and Luis, who I think have been the two biggest stories of this rotation. Daniel Kramer plugged this stat in his gamer here on Sunday. The Mariners are now combined 7-9 in games started by Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo. And we're 15-8 behind everyone else. Yeah, it's tough. It's really tough. Yeah, it's not good. And it just highlights it again.

[00:24:56] This weekend, there were things that went against the Mariners in this series. But the first thing that's going to jump out at you is that both of those guys struggled again. Luis on Friday, Bryce on Sunday. They just didn't have it. Again, Bryce looked better early on, but couldn't sustain it throughout the start. Let's start with Bryce. What should the Mariners do?

[00:25:20] It's a tough question because, again, it goes back to what I was just saying about they are more or less going to have to ride this out through the course of the year. Now, if you want a short-term fix, again, so this now becomes us speculating on things. But when George Kirby comes back, I do wonder if the Mariners give Bryce a few starts off. They IL him and they either say physically get right. Mentally, get yourself right. Or a little bit of both.

[00:25:51] And try to use that time as a little bit of a reset to hopefully have things click with him and change the course of his season moving forward. Other than that, I'm not really sure what they can do. It's not like they're not going to pitch him. The snowball effect it sounds like with Bryce, it sounds like it's the physical stuff first. He feels something first. That's where it seems to start. But then after that, he keeps talking about it.

[00:26:17] And now that he's talked about it multiple times, it doesn't have me feeling all that great. Because I feel like Bryce is so understanding of himself as a pitcher. Like, talking to him postgame about what he does. He's about as detailed and in-depth and straightforward as it gets. So he understands it. But then when he's stinking, right, then it also comes, he's also very transparent in how he's feeling. And he's noted how much the mental side has affected him. These handful of starts that haven't worked out.

[00:26:47] How, like, when he feels something that's going wrong, he said mentally, not to, I'm paraphrasing his words here, that he's just not able to get through it. And that ends up, it ends up affecting him like how it affected him later in this start. I mean, I think of, there's two, like, pitches that concern me. By the way, and a lot of this comes down to, well, he's not throwing hard enough, right?

[00:27:13] But when you're not throwing hard enough, then Bryce is sitting on their mound thinking, I don't have, I don't have, I don't have my weapon. What am I, how am I going to make this work? So he uses the mindset he wants to use with George Springer and throws him a sub 93 mile an hour fastball right down the middle. And George Springer deposits it in the upper deck on Sunday. And then Bryce is like, oh man. That was, and I'm sure Bryce, you know what Bryce does right away?

[00:27:40] Turns around, he looks up at the, at the, at the velo gun and says, oh, that's, that's not good. So what I'm feeling is actually sort of affecting me. And then once you get to the last pitch of the game, you're like, and by the way, Bryce's last pitch of the game was under 92 miles an hour as a fastball. And you're leaving, you're leaving the start and you're like, man, where's my stuff? Like, it's, it's gotta be frustrating at this point. Maybe it is going to just take rest where Bryce is not throwing for two weeks.

[00:28:10] It's going to be 15 days if he goes on the IL. So he gets two weeks off, rests, rejuvenates, and yeah, comes back. I'd be curious to see how they handle it. Is it like bullpen, get your stuff right? Or is it like, dude, you need to like refocus. So what do you think they do? Cause again, you, you asked me and I said, there's not that much they could do. They could give them a few starts off, but do you have any alternative options that maybe haven't been thought about yet?

[00:28:40] I like the idea of I L-ing him, but I don't think they're going to put them on the IL unless they think there was something physically wrong with him. I do think Kirby coming back would take the pressure off of him because right now he's the number two starter in the rotation. The pressure is on with Wu goes out there and he's been awesome this season and he throws, you know, he's been throwing like the number one in this current iteration of the rotation.

[00:29:08] Luis has clearly struggled. He, Luis had a couple of good starts his first, his two times out before this, but on Friday he was not good at all. And, you know, now Bryce in the scenario he's in realizes, Hey, like I've had a few bad starts in a row. I got to have this back. I got to have this back. And then it's just continually not happening. Well, something needs to sort of reset him a little bit because it's, it just sounds like there's so many factors involved with Bryce Miller right now.

[00:29:37] So that's a long way of saying, even if I like I L-ing him, I don't think the Mariners are going to, I think they're just going to want to figure it to figure it out. Unless he comes and says, my shoulder's just barking. It's, it's, it's not, it's not in the right space. So I'll need some time off.

[00:29:55] So my other question for this, I don't think we're there yet, but it has been a thought, at least a little bit, which is if you're not going to I L- him and if you just continue to let him figure it out and keep pitching, do the Mariners get to a point? And the answer to this may be no.

[00:30:17] Do the Mariners get to a point where they continue to let Emerson Hancock make starts over Bryce Miller and they make some other decision with Bryce to, I don't know, put him in the bullpen or something like that? Because if this continues, like an Emerson continues to throw like this, results are results, right? Like Emerson Hancock has been awesome. That would be quite the decision.

[00:30:42] It's from a, like a logic baseball, like no nameplate decision, like take the nameplates away. It, it sounds like it makes more sense. I don't see with the names though, how you make that decision. Because it's just not, it's not something they do. A guy with a sub three ERA, a sub one whip last year and you put them in the bullpen. Yeah, it'd be, it'd be a pretty drastic change.

[00:31:08] It would be, it would be, it would be probably the most drastic on roster change they've ever made this regime. And it would be unlikely. Again, which is why I preface the question with the answer to this may be no. If you were to ask me, I think the answer probably is still no. But, it's more a question of, it's less of actually making the, the move to replace a starter. And more of, what do you do with Bryce Miller?

[00:31:35] Again, because like if this continues, do you, do you just keep letting him ride it out? Because I'm just wondering how many times with Bryce, again, and it sucks because like, we love Bryce Miller. And we want to see him thrive. And we want to see him do exactly what he did last year. And I know nobody wants that more than he does.

[00:31:54] But, it's just a question of if this pattern continues where stuff is down, you know, keeps talking about some small physical things he's battling through. You know, keeps having to, you know, really, really work his way through some starts. And it keeps, it keeps resulting in, you know, some outings that are less than desirable. It can't go on all year, right? The Mariners won't let that happen. No, they won't.

[00:32:24] I would ask you this question. What would being in the bullpen accomplish? Nothing. I mean, other than you still value him as one of your 13 best arms in the organization and you get something out of him. Because his stuff was up a little bit earlier in the game today and then it decreased as time went on. So maybe you think you can get something out of him early, just out of a one inning sample. I don't know. Again, it's not a great solution. But it more becomes what I just talked about.

[00:32:53] If Emerson Hancock continues to throw like this and the Mariners, which we obviously know they are, are in a mindset of making the playoffs this year and making a run this year. And Emerson continues to go out and spin starts like six innings and two runs every time out. You know, you can't ignore that forever. You can't. I think they would. I think that'd be third on the list of things they would do was behind keep him in the rotation and put him on the on the aisle.

[00:33:20] I think that'd be the best way to fix Bryce Miller, the starter is either rest or continuing to start not be in the bullpen. Unfortunately, like I appreciate the idea. It's not it is not like some crazy outlandish idea, but it just doesn't. It doesn't. I don't think logically make sense for how the Mariners are right. I don't.

[00:33:50] I love Emerson like one of the great, great human. He is. He's pitched unbelievable this year. I still don't think the current version of Bryce Miller gets demoted in any sense over Emerson Hancock. Let's just throw out a hypothetical and say that when Emerson pitches against the Yankees this week, let's say he has another really good start and he keeps him in the game and they win that game.

[00:34:16] And then Bryce Miller goes out against the Padres and has another tough start. Does the conversation change at all? If that's just another piece of Emerson Hancock sample size, it gets built up or then for you specifically, does it become more of all right? It may be time to just give him a couple weeks off and let him rest and recuperate a little. I'd give him the weeks off. And I think that's what the Mariners want, too. And that's probably what I'd do.

[00:34:44] Again, you originally asked me the question and that's what I answered. I said I would give him a little bit of time off. Maybe wait until Kirby gets back. Because George Kirby is expected to make, I believe, one more rehab start. After that, I think he should be good to go. I'm assuming in the next rehab start, by the way, he'll get closer to 70, 75 pitches. Because he wasn't quite there in this one. It was in the 50s range. I'm going to guess the next one he's going to build back up, get closer to 70. When he makes his first big league start, he'll be around the 80 pitch mark.

[00:35:13] So I would assume the Mariners would wait for Kirby to get back, for them to do that with Bryce Miller. But when he gets back, I wouldn't be totally shocked if that's what you see. I'm just kind of bummed for Bryce. We had a brief exchange with him this weekend. And he sounded pretty confident. He made it sound like, you know, I'm ready. I'm back. That's what he made it sound like.

[00:35:38] So for it to not go well, it has to feel frustrating where you have all this confidence built up. Because I've been there and done that. You know, you're confident in an idea you have and something you're going to do. And you go to execute it and it doesn't work out. And then you get, you know, you feel kind of dejected by that. And this is for all the things that Bryce has been working towards. And to have it go south on Sunday after feeling confident in his ability to get to where he wanted to go. I think it kind of stinks for him.

[00:36:08] And you were there. I mean, I think you got the same impression, too, of what it is with Bryce. I don't know if we're close enough with Bryce where he'll, you know, tell us about the mental side of pitching and what he deals with out there on the mound. But, you know, I just have to feel like, you know, he felt like he was in the right place this weekend. And it still just didn't work out. And again, early on, it was a little better.

[00:36:31] It was just as the start went on and he had to continue to build up his pitch count and try to stretch out his start over the course of a game. That's when it started to change as the fourth inning or so rolled on. And that's when the damage started to come. So, you know, he wasn't totally wrong. Again, first few innings, I thought he looked pretty sharp despite giving up one run.

[00:36:57] But after that, again, it was just the lack of ability to sustain it through a full start, which is what's shorthanding him a little bit right now. And I'm sure what's leaving him frustrated right now. I do have a couple things on Luis. Do you have anything else on Bryce? No. And again, it's I don't. It's just been such a big storyline with him. And we'll just have to see how it progresses as time moves forward. I'm going to guess he'll make his next start in San Diego.

[00:37:22] I would not be shocked when Kirby comes back if maybe they give him a couple weeks to just reset. We'll see. Leave us a comment on what you think they should do with Bryce. I'd be curious to see what the people think about this. So please, YouTube, send us a DM, comment on Instagram. Whatever works for you. Let us know what you would do with that. Luis also was not good on Friday. He had had a couple good starts and then regressed back to what he had generally looked like this year.

[00:37:52] I hadn't looked at his numbers in a minute. And that's my fault. I host a Mariners podcast. I probably need to look at his numbers more often. His strikeout rate this year is down to 17.5%. Yeah. His whip is nearly 1.4. It's not great. And his walk rate is less than half a percent away from his career high right now.

[00:38:19] And that's with the VLO being down as well. We, on an episode a couple weeks ago, we spent a little bit more time in depth than we'll talk about here. Mentioning Luis Castillo. But he is the other part of this rotation of having the rotation is where it is right now. Because I look at... You can tell me how you feel about this right now. And how I lay out this Mariners rotation right now, right? You have our guys Logan Evans and Emerson Hancock right now who are pitching well.

[00:38:49] But will, under, I would say a normal five-man rotation circumstance with everyone healthy, will be back in Tacoma at this point. But they pitch well. But they wouldn't have enough volume to make a dent on the current stats of the Mariners rotation right now. No, and I'm sure they understand that, right? That they know that when all five of those guys are healthy, they know, look, that is the rotation for the time being.

[00:39:14] You have Brian Wu, who has been a bulldog, has been the most productive member of the rotation. Logan was really good before he got hurt. He didn't have the length in innings, but on his... Most of his expected stats were elite, elite. So, you know, he was pretty good. He was progressing very well when he was throwing.

[00:39:35] And then you have Bryce and Luis, who I think have contributed a fair amount to the struggles of where this rotation currently is at right now. And this, Lyle, is what normal teams go through. Not all their pitchers are great all the time. Right. As unfortunate as it is, you can't have five aces. Because, you know, Luis and Bryce have been, you know, sort of that this season of what the Mariners have been dealing with. And thankfully, the offense has managed to bail them out a lot. He's been able to score a bunch of runs.

[00:40:04] Even though the rotation is not preventing runs the way they used to, they have been able to come through and win some of those games. Like, Kramer had the 7-9 record for starts by Miller and Castillo. I guarantee you, last year, that record's worse. Probably by a decent amount. Maybe it's 2-14. It would be awful. They would not be in first place if that was the case. But that's just kind of how I see the Mariners rotation structured as it is right now.

[00:40:32] Thankfully, if you want some optimism, as long as everyone stays healthy, it's only going to get better. I can't imagine it being lower than this. Right. Because in the first month and a half of the year, you have had Logan Gilbert go down with an injury. You've had Bryce Miller battle through some minor things. And you've had George Kirby not throw a pitch yet. But wouldn't you expect that, come the rest of the year, you would expect George Kirby to pitch like George Kirby?

[00:40:58] You'd expect Logan Gilbert once back on the field to be Logan Gilbert and be an ace. And you would expect Bryce Miller that, again, whether it's with some rest or whether it's just with some time to work with Pete Woodworth and Trent Blank and figure some things out and kind of make some small adjustments to what he's done early in the year. Wouldn't you expect that those three guys moving forward should only be much more effective than they've been thus far? You would think so. I mean, because usually going into the year, the expectation was those are your three best starters.

[00:41:28] On paper, they are your three best starters, despite all the hype and praise I've given for Brian Wu and how great I think he can be. And so far, everybody that said that has been right about that. But on paper, those are your three best starters. And you would expect that those three guys are going to look a lot different moving forward than they've looked so far. And that would be the ultimate separator if the offense keeps hitting in the American League.

[00:41:53] So the goal is to get all of that together sometime in the next five months and get it for a two-month stretch and put yourselves in the playoffs. I think that would be very productive. That is something this right here, this subject right here, I think is what I'm paying most attention to over the next few weeks of this Mariners season. Are we going to see the improvement from the rotation? Doesn't need to be last year's levels. Can they get back into the top 10? Right now, they're outside of the top 15.

[00:42:22] Back into the top 10. I think that would go a long way to booing this team up even more. I'm with you. Is that about all the thoughts we got after this weekend's sweep? Yeah, I think so. And less like all the Canadians are pretty nice. I don't think anyone was mean to us, which is great. And to be fair, they usually are. They usually are nice. They're just loud and pack the stadium and it makes it feel like a road game. Yeah, very productive weekend.

[00:42:50] I do enjoy the energy of the stadium when the Blue Jays are in town. I'm excited to see the Yankees crowd this week. I have not seen a Yankees crowd at T-Mobile Park in quite a long time. I don't remember the last Yankee game at T-Mobile I went to. But we'll be there when this episode comes out on Monday and on Tuesday as well. So if you see us, you can holler at us. Definitely. All right. That just about wraps up this edition of the Marine Layer Podcast. We do want to give you one final reminder. We said it at the start of the show. We'll say it again now.

[00:43:18] Our next live show is May 24th. That's Saturday. It's back over at Queen Anne Beer Hall in Seattle. We're going to host the live show starting at noon. And then we're going to stick around and watch the game with everybody at 1 o'clock for a 1 o'clock watch party. It's going to be great. We hope to see you there. We've had a blast with these so far. It's been awesome to get you guys involved. And we want to do more of it. So come on out if you're going to be free. Again, Saturday, May 24th, 12 p.m., Queen Anne Beer Hall in Seattle.

[00:43:46] If you want to stay on top of all of our stuff, we hope you do. You guys know the drill. You can go right over to our website, marinelayerpod.com. It's all over there. Whether you want to listen to our episodes, watch our episodes. If you want to join our Patreon, which we hope you do. If you want to get our merch. So cool seeing merch around the park this weekend, by the way. We saw a handful of it. People walking around and tagging us in pictures and kind of flashing all their Marine Layer Pod merch. Awesome. So if you guys want to get any and you guys want some for yourself, it's all over on our website. You can find it.

[00:44:16] And then on social media, we're everywhere. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Twitter. You can find us over at Marine Layer Pod. That's TJ. I'm Lyle. As always, we thank you guys for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.